


Lost In Translation

by EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12



Series: Jaime and Brienne and What We All Deserved [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Braime Bunch, Canon Disabled Character, Dad Jaime, Dyslexia, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Jaime Lannister as Barristan Selmy's Squire, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Slice of Life, Snippets, Tarth, Tywin Lannister's A+ Parenting, Up until the end, Wholesome, canon dyslexic character, mostly canon, not sure how to tag this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 14:37:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19336540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12/pseuds/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12
Summary: “You will sit here until you can write that properly.”But that had been hours ago, and what had been him writing by the light of the window where he could see his sister out in the rose garden was now him writing by candlelight with the window shut. His stomach was growling, a blister had formed on his index finger. A half-dozen empty ink pots were strewn across the table and quills with broken tips were scattered amongst them as he waited.





	Lost In Translation

**Author's Note:**

> The second of the Braime stories I'm writing, this one focused a lot on Jaime. I think I'll do one focused on BRienne next, but I'm not sure! 
> 
> As a dyslexic person myself, I can related to the #struggle, and this was actually real cathartic to write! 
> 
> As always, hope you enjoy. Please R and R, let me know what you think!

_“You will sit here until you can write that properly.”_

But that had been hours ago, and what had been him writing by the light of the window where he could see his sister out in the rose garden was now him writing by candlelight with the window shut. His stomach was growling, a blister had formed on his index finger. A half-dozen empty ink pots were strewn across the table and quills with broken tips were scattered amongst them as he waited.

He had thought to get up once, after he had figured he had waited long enough and that his Lord Father would have forgotten. But as soon as he had opened the door to the hall, eager to run out where he had seen little Tyrion taking a few uncertain steps through along the path, his father had stepped out of a room at the end of the hall, his eyes watching him until he turned and went back to the workroom.

Since then, he had only moved once to use the chamber pot and otherwise had wasted his way through rolls of parchment trying to write out the lineage of house Targaryen. But there were so many of them, with names that all seemed to sound the same. A line of kings with E’s where his mind seemed to think that I’s should go and d’s that seemed an awful lot like h’s. He had thought he was making some progress until the Maester had come in to check on his progress – an order from his Lord Father – and had scoffed at the page he was writing on. The letters were too far apart, his penmanship was atrocious, and his attempts at spelling were poor at best, apparently. And, the piece of parchment he had thought he had been making the most progress on was torn in half in front of him and tossed into the small corner fire.

It was dark now, nearly time for bed. He was tired and hungry and for once in his life, would have liked to have taken a bath. The doorknob creaked and he sat upright, gripping the quill to make it look as though he had been writing urgently.

“Jaime,” Cersei whispered, shutting the door quietly. He turned to look at her dressed in her nightclothes already, her hair damp from a recent bath. “Why are you still in here?”

She walked over to the table, and he hurried to shuffle around the papers so that she couldn’t see his failures. At eight years old, she was already able to write all of her letters and read so well that their Lord Father often let her read his letters aloud to him if he was joining them for breakfast. Jaime had always felt his face burn with embarrassment at those breakfasts and never had been able to finish his eggs on those mornings, instead giving them to little Tyrion who would reach a fat baby hand out to grasp Jaime’s fingers while the house servants tried to get him to eat.  After that though, Jaime would get to go to the training yard where it didn’t matter that letters were all jumbled in his mind or that his Lord Father had, while listening to Cersei, been staring at his reddening face as Jaime stabbed his plate with unintended ferocity.

“Father says I have to stay here until this is finished,” He said finally, covering his mess of pages with his arms.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” He said quickly, but her eyes were already on the book he was referencing, her finger pointing to the proud 3-headed red dragon on the seal of House Targaryen. “It’s nothing, Cersei.”

“Are you writing out the names?” She asked, and her eyes turned to him, sharp as emerald stones.

“Yes,” He said finally. “I’m almost done.”

He was not almost done. He was scarcely started, though he had stopped mixing up the d’s and the h’s.

“What else have you been doing?” He felt his face go bright red, though thankfully it was disguised by the candlelight. Her eyes widened a bit, then narrowed again. “You haven’t been doing this all day, have you?”

He tried to answer but as he tried, she pulled a piece of ruined parchment from under him, looking over the names that scarcely matched the ones in the book. She looked over it, not saying anything as his cheeks burned redder and redder and he felt tears come to the edge of his eyes, determined for her not to see them.

Whatever Cersei was going to say, it was stopped by the door swinging open. “Bed,” Lord Tywin stood in the doorway, eyes on his daughter. Whatever she had been going to say to Jaime died in her throat as she walked past him to her bedchamber at the end of the hall. The door closed behind his father, but Jaime didn’t look over, determined not to let the tears still clinging to his eyes fall or to let the yawn pushing at his throat escape where his father could see it.

“Are you finished?”

“No, father,” He said as resolutely as he could. “I am almost finished.”

“Stay here until it is, then.” And the door closed behind him again, and Jaime set back to work writing down the name of the fourth Targaryen King. The edge of the parchment curled a bit where he finally let a tear fall onto the page, thinking of Cersei’s face looking at his sheet with clear disdain and the fact that they were making his favorite pie with dinner and that his hand was hurting and that he had missed little Tyrion’s first trip to the garden.

In the morning he woke with ink dried to his fingers where he had fallen asleep holding the quill. On the desk were two bread rolls, a peach, and a stone glass of water that he reached for eagerly. On the other side sat a new parcel of fresh parchment and three new inkwells. He sighed, chewing forcefully as the tears came unbidden and he pushed aside his final parchment from the night before to begin a new one with no ink stains on the corners.

_“You will sit here until you can write that properly.”_

He curses under his breath, watching a sad attempt at a capital J soak into the page as he held the quill against the paper. His father’s voice wandered in and out of his head and suddenly he was no longer and anointed night or a Kingslayer or secret father or the King or a Golden Lion or anything else they cared to call him and instead he was eight years old and crying in the drawing room writing about Baelor the Blessed and Aegon the Conqueror as his sister, always smarter, ran about out of doors.  

Now was worse perhaps, as he failed to write his own name as his one remaining hand rebelled against him. The other, now a cast of gold, sat heavy on the table beside him looking every bit as ostentatious as the embroidered crimson doublet he was wearing. It was a simple letter that his father had asked him to write, promising payment to the Lord of a small holdfast for sending servants to assist with the wedding arrangements for Joffrey.

He hadn’t realized, or perhaps hadn’t acknowledged at the time, that his father had asked him to do this as another cruelty. That morning when he had scarcely been able to lace his breeches without assistance and had required help for his shirt should have been indicative enough that this would go poorly. Any half-trained squire or servant could have written this letter for him, or Tyrion who’s primary ambition at the moment seemed to be squeezing money from Olenna Tyrell and avoiding his Lady Wife, but instead he had chosen Jaime as some humiliation for his being captured and returned to Kings’ Landing by women.

He had never had beautiful handwriting, even his father had given up on that, but this was another matter altogether. In the three days he had once sat learning all of the ancient Kings and Queens, he had finally accomplished it by muscle memory. How to form the right letters in the right order with his right hand. Now, all of that memory alongside the memory of swinging a sword in perfect wide arcs had been lopped off. And this hand had no memory and even less desire to cooperate.

The door opened to one of the bedservants who gave him a strange look as she cleaned the room around him. He paused for a moment, having no desire of his struggle to write his own name to be known around the castle. His thoughts wondered to Brienne. Where she might be in the castle or on the grounds, whether she had had the chance to meet with Sansa Stark or if his sister’s cruelty towards that girl had kept them apart so far. He wanted to go and speak with her, their time together waning (though she had agreed to stay for the wedding at their family’s invitation), and he wished that the armor he had commissioned was ready.

“Jaime?” Lost in thought, he had not heard the door open again. This time it was Tyrion, walking in to stand next to him. “What are you doing in here?”

“Writing a letter,” He looked around, the bedservant gone as well. Tyrion came over to the desk, looking at the abandoned attempts that Jaime had already made, the inkstain on the back of his hand. “What about you?”

“Our King wants me to ensure that he and his betrothed have personal access to the finest wine during the ceremony,” Tyrion’s voice dripped with sarcasm to the point that Jaime had to smile despite his current personal crisis.  “I’m finding the poor unfortunate soul to be responsible for that and I noticed the door was shut.”

“Yes, well… I didn’t think anyone would want to see me failing miserably to address this letter,” He said. He had learned long ago how to deflect away from his inability to write properly with humor rather than the dark embarrassment that had followed him for years. But Tyrion had always been able to see through him. He said nothing and instead picked up a fresh piece of parchment from his table.

Jaime, swallowed and spoke verbatim the words that his father had wanted written that Tyrion copied dutifully onto the page. When they were finished, his brother handed him the quill to sign at the bottom. “Perhaps initials for now,” He suggested, and Jaime complied, struggling even for that. Tyrion blew on the paper carefully, wrapping it tightly. “I’ll deliver this to Pycelle.” He said, turning to leave again.

“Tyrion,” His brother stopped, a strange look on his face. “Thank you,” Jaime said. His brother smiled.

“There is nothing wrong with a bit of help sometimes.” And he left Jaime to sit by himself for a moment, watching the wedding displays being built outside, the tops of beautiful tents and banners and feasting tables and everything else built on the artifice of royalty that had been constructed. Tyrion was right, of course, which is precisely why he stood, taking the sword his father had gifted him from the table where it still lay in its scabbard and heading towards the room with the Book of Brothers where he was due to meet an armorer.

 

_“You will sit here until you can write that properly.”_

Now it wasn’t his hand or his mind that worked against him, but his heart. IT was a rare moment of peace, and as such, he was seeing to the other duties he had as Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, one of which was recording the great deeds of his brothers-in-arms. Word had come from across the sea that Barristan the Bold was dead, and though there was of course no public mourning for a traitor to the crown and a disparaged knight who had been removed from his own vows, Jaime had sat in contemplation of what to right for nearly half an hour.

Many of the pages had deeds recorded already. Memories of battles and actions taken by Ser Barristan that were given as a laundry list of accomplishments. The early ones were recorded by a different Lord Commander, the later ones by Ser Barristan himself who had filled in few details. Of all the knights Jaime had known, he had been perhaps one of the truest to cause, however wayward that cause may have been.

He remembered when he had been taken to squire by Ser Barristan, an arrangement made truly by his father, but one that Jaime was more than excited about. As a small child, he had dreamed of Ser Arthur Dayne, Sword of the Morning, but this was far more realistic and hardly a downgrade. Long morning spent in the armory yards, nights spent under open fields and stars as he learned the names of figures and constellations and boats and knights and the great houses his father had always wanted him to learn by writing them, he had instead learned by living among them for the first time in his life.

He had been enamored with him when in their first true fight as knight and squire, Ser Barristan had unseated and disarmed two men before it seemed that Jaime could even breathe. Shortly after, he had shown Jaime how to do it himself, a tactic he had used one recently to steal a horse from a Riverlands soldier (for as much good as it had done him).

The last entry could not have been more than a couple of months before King Robert’s death, recording some decision he had been a part of as part of the small council to find and destroy Daenerys Targaryen. A decision, it seemed, that Ser Barristan had disagreed with strongly.

_“The greatest charge on a knight is the protection of innocents, Jaime, you would do well to remember that when the time comes.”_

_“Your job isn’t to protect innocents, Ser,” Jaime had said. Ser Barristan’s head turning towards him with raised eyebrows that were not quite as white as the hair on his head was starting to turn. “You are to protect the king aren’t you?”_

_After a good round of laughter, Ser Barristan had put his helmet back on. “You’re too smart for your own good, Jaime.”_

Even now the thought of that conversation made him feel a touch of warmth and small ache in his chest. He should be mourning his Lord Father, who’s corpse was only recently buried. Instead, he thought of Ser Barristan and time they sailed the Stormlands on the King’s command when there were the first stirrings of rebellion on Storm’s End. And the only time he had been to Dorne when Ser Barristan had taken him along at the age of eleven to see the procession of the royal family as Elia Martell was moved to Kings’ Landing for her wedding to the Prince. And of all of the early mornings in the training yard and all of the gentle but firm words of encouragement and practice when Jaime had struggled still with writing so soon after being squired and of his support in his first days after joining the Brotherhood when his father and sister had fled the city and he had never felt quite so alone.

He closed his eyes, letting the jumbled letters on the page stop for a moment as he thought about what he wanted to say. His arm was stronger now, after his practicing with Bronn, and his head a bit more clear after the end of Tyrion’s trial and Joffrey’s death and everything else. He let out a long breath, and finally started to write. The letters came painstakingly slow, but there were there. Legible, clear, and free of too much of the burden Ser Barristan’s legacy might have carried from being aligned too closely with him.

 

_“You will sit here until you can write that properly.”_

He was at an inn somewhere off the edge of the Kingsroad. Close to northern territory, this would be perhaps the last night that he could spend without his disguise on fully. There was one more castle that owed its allegiance to House Lannister before he was officially well on his way, and part of him thought to write this letter and send it along with the Maester there.

It was for Tyrion. To let him know that it would be only him coming. A single man with a single sword on a single horse. No rations, no supplies. No army to speak of either, while their sister remained behind and strengthened the battlements of King’s Landing against whatever was coming South for her. The old woman who ran the inn was weary of him, of all of them actually, it seemed. Word of the dead had spread over the kingdoms, and the fact that the queen had not responded had not gone unnoticed. She had leant him the quill, though, and the parchment which he had tipped a full silver dragon for, so sometimes her eyes would leave him long enough to glower at one of the other patrons every so often.

He felt like he had bees in his blood at the moment however, cold sweat running down his temples. How would Tyrion take this news? How would he receive Jaime? If at all. He thoughts flitted between Tyrion and the stony face of Daenerys Targaryen who had taken the time to give him a full once over at the Dragonpit, knowing full well he was the Kingslayer. He thought of Jon Snow, whom he actually had quite liked in what seemed another lifetime, who had seemed almost as if he were made of stone after they had burned the wight.

Mostly he thought of Brienne. He could say, unequivocally, that it was her fault that he was riding north now. She had grabbed him, pulled him aside, and told him, for an unaccountable number of times, what it was he ought to do with his life. And, knowing she was right, he had listened to her yet again. She was entirely singular, he had always known that, but not in the way that others considered her to be. She was honorable, the most honorable. Perhaps the only person who knew what honor was any longer. And she considered him to be worth her time.

Her presence had shaken him to his core, and now, words were again failing him. He couldn’t quiet his body enough to quiet his mind to write the letter, but instead he sat, feeling the first bits of winter blowing in through the gap in the boards on the wall he sat next to. He should have gone back with them then, should have known what Cersei would do. She had called him the stupidest Lannister, and he had realized that she was right. Of course she was right. How many times had he been shown that truth in his life? IT was laid bare before him now, in a scribble that was supposed to resemble his brother’s name and an otherwise blank sheet.

More than an hour later, after all the patrons save one had gone to bed or passed out at their tables, he finally gave up. He returned the inkwell and the quill and himself tossed the paper into the fire.

 

_“You will sit here until you can write that properly.”_

He sat at her table, yet to strap on his arm. She was sleeping soundly and a large part of him cried out to join her on the bed, take her in his arms and forget that this notion had ever crossed his mind. For a month that had been his place, a well worn spot on the mattress and in the crook of her arms until he had finally felt at home. And now he was leaving again.

He knew what she would think, what everyone would think. If they had called him oathbreaker before, now he would simply be a traitor. At least in their minds. He was not riding south for his sister or for her love or for her memories or for any of the things they thought bound him to her and cut him off from the rest of the world. Oh, her pull was there, and when Sansa Stark had mentioned her earlier the spot of grief he felt was all to real. But his leaving was not to save her; he had realized what he had already known for much of his life: He would have to kill her. He might die with her, at her hand, but he was the only one who could get close enough to stop her before they had to tear the city apart.

If he were to say that, only Brienne would believe him. And then, she would accompany him.

He couldn’t have that. And so instead, he had waited. Waited on her to sleep in peace and in comfort thinking he would be there when she woke up. He would be long gone by then, riding through the night to make good pace. A single rider, catching up to the army for anyone who thought to stop him. And that was what he had tried to do. Prepared a horse and rations and a saddlebag all in secret. Prepared his clothing and armor and everything else for the road ahead without prying eyes on him. But when the time came, he could not just leave.

And so he had sat by her fire, put on another log as he had learned to do before leaving, and taken up her quill. He could not waste time, she could not wake up and find him like this or the temptation to stay here with her might overwhelm him. Tears came to his eyes, ones he could pretend were from the heat of the fire in front of him.

He scrawled in his best, abysmal penmanship what he knew would be his final letter to her. He looked at it, scarcely legible, before setting it down, strapping his golden hand to his wrist, and leaving as quietly as he could.

The next night, after she had begged him to stay, after he had told her everything he had to say in order to keep her there, he dreamed about the note. “I love you.” It said.

He wondered, upon waking, if she had been able to read it.

 

_“You will sit here until you can write that properly.”_

Of all of there children, only Catelyn had inherited his troubles with words. Her older sister and twin brothers read as easily as Brienne did, and for that he was grateful. But his second child, currently working on writing out her name, her tongue peaking out of her mouth in concentration, was very like him. Her letters were uneven, strangely spaced. At times she changed the a and the e in her own name, wrote letters backwards when they should have been forwards, or swapped them around in ways she hadn’t meant to. It had been an endless source of frustration for the septa, for whom Jaime did not care for anyway.

“You know, Cat, your mother suggested that it might make writing easier if you learn to do something else with your hands.”

“Like swordfighting?” She wrinkled her nose at that. At seven years old, she could not have been more different than her older sister who had taken to sword fighting as easily as her parents and trained daily with Ser Podrick, the new Evenfall Master-of-Arms. Brienne had said once that they reminded her vaguely of the Stark sisters with all of their embattled differences, and after hearing them argue once, he was inclined to agree.

“That would be one option,” He said. “But there are others.”

“What others?” She asked, now seeming interested in his suggestions.

“Well, your mother thought that needlework might be a good start…”

Her eyes, as green as his, shone brightly before she hesitated slightly. He frowned, thinking that would be a good option. She idolized Sansa, who had shown her on her last visit to Tarth when the boys were born, the lion and stars she had embroidered on blankets for them. The same she had done for all of the children.

“What’s wrong? I thought you quite liked needlework.”

“I do, father,” She said and her pale cheeks flushed red. “But I’ve no one to do it with…What if I’m bad at it like I am letters?”

He looked at her and was reminded of all of the times that he had wondered that same thing. The petty torments his father and sister inflicted on him. The gentle comforts that Tyrion first and then Brienne had offered him.

“You know, I’ve been wanting to work on my letters as well, I could do it with you.” He said finally, and watched as her look shifted from downcast to puzzled to outright excitement at the prospect. He wide smile banished the thought of his Lord Father’s sneer from his mind as she leapt into his arms, smearing ink on his doublet.

“When can we start? I want to make a lion for Joanna and Arthur and Selwyn like Queen Sansa did.” She said into his shoulder as he lifted her.

“As soon as we tell your mother,” He said, kissing the side of her hair.


End file.
